Boy Erased (16 page)

Naming something ugly had a similar effect. The sound of my mother's vomiting the night she drove me home had taught me this lesson better than anything else ever had. I was gay, had been named as such, a fact that, once ingested, had to be immediately expelled.

My father and I sat in silence for a few more seconds.

“We're not going to talk about your situation anymore,” he said. “Not until we know something else.”

I wondered if my parents had already arranged a therapy session, if they were just waiting to tell me after the jail. As irrational as it seemed to me even at the time, I thought of my visit here as a test. A test of my conviction, of my courage, of the love I felt for my family.

Without missing a beat, my father opened the console between us and pulled out a jumbo bag of peanut M&M's. It seemed magical, this gesture. One second before there had been only brown leather and the dark plastic of the dashboard and the dark colors of our clothes, and now here there was this bright yellow bag of hard candy reflecting the morning light in my father's hands.

“Catch,” he said, tossing the bag in my direction.

My hands fumbled, botching the catch, the bag landing in my lap to the sound of a hundred tiny marbles clacking at once.

“What is this?” I said.

“M&M's.”

I juggled the bright yellow bag between my hands. “I'm just wondering why you have them.”

“Here's what you'll do,” my father said, opening the driver's-side door, a gust of unseasonably warm air filling our cabin. “You'll give a handful of M&M's to any inmate who can recite at least two Bible verses.”

“That's the plan?” I asked. “Candy?”

“A few pieces of candy might seem like nothing to you, but these inmates don't have much. They love it when I visit.”

Church congregants often said my father's plans were inspired, and for good reason: They almost always came out of left field, caught you unawares, were just close enough to the point of absurdity to provide a little thrill in the pit of the stomach, made you question what could possibly happen next. Though I felt I'd outgrown them by now, I had to admit that my father's tactics often spawned from his own peculiar brand of genius. He understood what people wanted most of all, and he learned how to build his mission work around it.

Even though I hadn't asked him, I could already guess my father's logic. Give the inmates something they craved, something to work toward all week, and then lead them into a deeper understanding of scripture, their bodies giving way to their
souls. It was a variation on what Jesus had performed near Bethsaida, transforming seven loaves of bread and a few fish into enough food to feed five thousand men. My father's miracle would be, like Jesus's, one of magnification: A few peanut M&M's planted like a seed in these men's bellies, and they would feel satisfied by the shock of the nearly forgotten taste. Then—only then—would they be prepared to receive the body of Christ.

This was a reward system that had worked for me when I was younger. At vacation Bible school, I would recite the books of the Bible in order—Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges—the names strange and weighty on my tongue, conjuring up images of dusty scrolls and old bearded men sitting on gilded thrones; I had learned as many names as I could, knowing that our pastor would later reward me with candy.
Suffer little children
, the Bible says. I had heard my father explain once that the inmates were in many ways like little children caught with their hands in various candy jars—and that we were
all
like little children, lost until we found Jesus. Now we would teach the inmates that the rewards of candy, and eventually of heaven, came only after due diligence. “We have to appeal to their lower natures,” my father said, “before we can appeal to their higher ones.”

This past year my father had learned not to give the inmates anything that wasn't mass produced. He later told me that he had once filled a water cooler with grapes and ice, and passed out dripping bunches through the bars, only to find out later that the men had tried to make hooch, filling Ziploc bags with
juice from his grapes and putting pieces of stale bread into them, tucking the bags under their bunks to ferment.

Lying in bed at night, I would imagine these men gathered around the little bags, whispering gently and caressing the cool plastic with their calloused fingers. I would imagine all of them with tattooed arms wrapped around one another's shoulders, acting soft and sweet when no one was looking. I would imagine joining them behind the bars, slipping into one of the bunks, gripping the plastic underbelly, and sipping their warm wine. Then, the moment the guilt began to flood my chest and my breathing grew shallow, I would erase the thought, close my eyes so tightly that orange spots began to crowd my vision. The images would then dim, fade behind a wall of swirling dots, no longer beautiful to me.

•   •   •

B
EFORE
AGREEING
to come to the jail, I hadn't asked my father anything about what went on inside. I only knew that I needed to follow him, give him and God my best shot, do the things that might make me worthy in both of their eyes.

At the age of nine, while watching the Disney version of
Peter Pan
, I had sat transfixed before the living-room television as Peter shook his shadow out to dry—and it was to this sense of awe that I needed to return at the age of eighteen, to become a shadow, stitch myself to the soles of my father's feet until there was no longer any danger of being lost or trodden upon. I had already grown so much in that first semester of college, I
had already been through so much, that the thought of returning to eternal youth, of becoming a child once again in God's eyes, seemed an impossible act. I had flown to a new territory, but unlike what happened to Peter, this territory had altered me completely, rendered me somewhat of a stranger in my own home.

I imagined this was how David's boy had felt just after the rape, a stranger to himself and others around him, and I wondered if—and hoped that—he had found someone to lead him out of the maze where David had ravaged and left him. In my unconscious, this unnamed boy had somehow become Brandon. I had nightmares about it, moments of transfiguration in which the boy would stand up from a pile of soiled sheets and walk across Chloe's basement floor to the edge of my sleeping bag. The slapping of feet on cold concrete. And in the blue light of the television his features would become Brandon's, and he would ask me if I truly wanted to be gay, and when I didn't answer, he would ask me if I truly wanted to kill myself, and when I didn't answer again, he would lie beside me on the sleeping bag, stare white eyed into my eyes like Janet Leigh in
Psycho
until the dream ended.

Despite this dream, I hadn't called Brandon to check up on him, too terrified of hearing something I didn't want to hear, too unprepared for whatever Chloe might say if she answered the phone. I still hadn't spoken to Chloe since cutting off communication, and I didn't want to face her judgment once she found out what I was going through. How could I begin to
explain to her a situation that, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist?

On the ride to the jail, I had braced myself for David's sudden appearance each time our truck hugged a curve in the road. I knew it was irrational, that there was no reason for David to be on these roads, but just the mention of his name had the power to conjure him. I had examined each vehicle we passed for traces of his pale face, darting my eyes quickly from one passenger to the next so I wouldn't have to endure prolonged eye contact. Considering my current situation, however, the county jail seemed like the safest place to avoid him. I had already learned that no one was going to punish him for what he did. Our Presbyterian college's pastor had counseled me to keep my head down, avoid scandal, since it would only be my word against his.

Keeping my head down was something David taught me best of all, but it was the others—the ones whom I later told—who insisted on a permanent spinal readjustment. What David had done to this boy and me was invisible, something people around me simply didn't want to discuss. In taking on the power of invisibility, I had also given up my voice.

•   •   •

“D
ON
'
T
BE
SCARED
,” my father said, eyeing me. “These men are just like everyone else. They just got caught.”

We both stepped out of the truck. I held the bag of M&M's in a tight grip.

“I'm not scared,” I said, my syllables cracking open.
Ska-aired
.

My father clicked the remote on his keys and the truck honked beside me, flashing its useless headlights. He had dressed down for the occasion, standing in pale jeans and white tennis shoes and an untucked dark blue button-down, his graying black hair tousled by the occasional breeze that slipped between the mountains behind us. Since many of the inmates inside were poor and down on their luck, he didn't want to wear anything too expensive and give them the wrong impression. He wasn't Jim Bakker. He didn't want their money. He wanted their souls safe and secure in Heaven.

I stood beside him in a black
Legend of Zelda
T-shirt, frayed denim jeans, and flip-flops. I'd rediscovered the T-shirt the night before in the bottom of my old dresser, after the two-hour drive home from college. Though I hadn't touched a video game in over a year,
Zelda
seemed an appropriate choice. Link, the game's silent protagonist, was an expert at entering dungeons and solving puzzles. I needed him now more than ever.

I followed my father across the black asphalt. We stepped into the partial shade of the jail, and he rotated his silver watch until its glass face glinted up at him, burned a white half-moon onto his cheek.

“Wild Thing should be here by now,” he said, the half-moon sliding between the cleft of his chin.

Wild Thing was my father's nickname for Jeff, a man who washed cars for him full-time and one of the members of my
father's prayer circle. I had worked alongside him every summer since my father took over the dealership, had learned how to detail cars from him. He taught me to notice the smallest blemishes in used cars: the dusty space between the speedometer's face and its glass cover, the crumb-filled margins between the front seats and the console, the gooey inner linings of backseat storage pockets. He taught me that details were what mattered most. People wanted to believe that someone was paying attention, that someone cared enough to dig deep.

When my father first met him, Wild Thing's hair had been long and greasy, slicked back like a rodent's, and his words had run together in one long slur. After my father led Wild Thing to the Lord, kneeling with him in his office, the name had stuck as a sort of ironic misnomer. Wild Thing was hardly wild anymore.

We had made a good team. When we worked together, he took to the chemicals while I took to the pressure washer. When we encountered an impossible stain, both of us took turns scrubbing it with a rag, picking up where the other left off. Unlike me, however, Wild Thing had been able to give
himself
a detailing, used his skills to tame whatever past he'd had. He'd found a way out of the darkness—gotten a haircut, covered up his tattoos with long sleeves, learned how to enunciate his syllables—and it led him to teach these inmates to follow the same path.

He showed up a few minutes later, his short hair slicked to one side with a generous amount of product.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said, his breathing shallow, his face sweaty. “Had to go back for my Bible.” He held up a black King James Bible, fanned it back and forth in front of his face. He never went anywhere without it, a new Christian “hungry for the Word of God,” as my father put it. As far as I could tell, he knew nothing of my situation. My father seemed to confirm this with a look that said,
You might be here because of your sin, but you don't need to acknowledge it
,
you don't need to let anyone else know our shame
.

“God didn't waste any time this morning,” Wild Thing said, craning his neck to look at the sky, his Adam's apple bobbing. “Turned out to be a beautiful day.”

I followed his gaze. A raft of cirrus clouds was breaking apart above the mountain peaks, tumbling lazily through the troposphere. It was one of those days when the blackness of space seems to press harder against the atmosphere, lending the sky a richer saturation, unnoticed until the eye chooses to reveal its depth.

“That's the sight of God resting,” my father said. ‘“And He rested on the seventh day.'”

“We don't get to rest,” Wild Thing said, gesturing to the jail entrance. “God made this world, and now we've got to make sure we don't ruin it with our sin.”

The three of us walked up to the jail's metal door. My father pressed a small red button in the center of a metal box and announced himself. He turned back to us, clearing his throat.

“Ready to save some souls?” he said.

“Been waiting all morning,” Wild Thing said.

From somewhere above our heads came the sound of a mounted camera revolving to face us. The three of us looked up, watched its lens zoom. From that high angle, our faces must have formed a triangle, with mine as the rear vertex.

The door hummed to life, the sound of a game show buzzer. My father pushed open the door. I followed him and Wild Thing inside the anteroom, the shock of air-conditioning on my skin, and waited for the other door to buzz open. We stood in a cramped metal box, as though in an elevator, with a small window looking out into an empty reception area.

“Just so we're all on the same page,” my father said, his voice a sudden echo. “What's the only verse the inmates can't get any candy for?”

I squared my shoulders. This time I didn't hesitate to guess. “John 11:35.” It was a verse every devout Missionary Baptist kid had tried “memorizing” at least once, usually when first asked to recite something in vacation Bible school, and usually because it was so short. My father didn't want the inmates to slack on reading their Bibles by studying such a simple verse; he wanted as many of God's words to enter their heads as possible.
Jesus wept
: two simple words that had haunted me. I hadn't cried since the night my mother drove me back from campus—since I had watched the high-line wires dip between the pale stars, thinking only of what my father would say once he found out, the wires stringing together constellations I couldn't name. I didn't plan to cry again anytime soon. When I saw a man crying
in church, it seemed as though he were about to rip the skin from his face, peel it back for everyone to see his second, secret self. In the weeks following my rape, any time I thought about crying, I pinched myself hard enough to focus on the pain instead. I wasn't about to give anyone another opportunity to see my weakness.